Friday, August 10, 2012

Some of the Worst Killers (part 1)

Alaa Abu Dhein

Location: Jerusalem

Date: March 6, 2008

Crime: Dhein is known for carrying out
an attack known as the ‘Mercaz HaRav Massacre’, where eight students
were killed and eleven more injured during a shooting at a religious
academy in Jerusalem, Israel.

Biography: It is said that the
perpetrator of this act of violence, Alaa Abu Dhein was not a known
member of any militant groups. After the shootings, his family
described him as an intensely religious Muslim, who at one time served
as a driver who brought supplies to the seminary where the attack
occurred. According to the 26-year old gunman’s sister, Dhein had
become increasingly more transfixed by the violence in Gaza, where 126
Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces over the previous week. On
the evening of the attack, he packed an AK-47 in a cardboard box and
drove to the ministry. He walked through the building to the library
where some 80 students were gathered and opened fire. He fired between
500 – 600 rounds, before one of the students was able to squeeze off a
few shots with a pistol hitting Dhein in the chest twice. Dhein,
wounded, continued the assault until an Israeli Defence Force captain
arrived on the scene and shot him dead. A fringe political group
called Galilee Liberators Brigades claimed responsibility for the
attacks, but there is no evidence to corroborate that Dhein was ever
affiliated with the group.

Aleksandr Pichushkin

Location: Moscow, Russia

Date: 1992 – 2006

Crime: ‘The Chessboard Killer’ was
convicted of 48 of the 49 murders he was accused of, but asked the
judge to add an additional 11victims to the death toll. He initially
claimed he wanted to kill 64 people, the same number as the squares on a
chessboard. Most of his victims were elderly men, whom he lured with
vodka and after getting them drunk, bashed in their skulls with a
hammer.

Biography: Born in 1974 and raised by
his mother after the father abandoned the family. Pichushkin may also
have been affected by an accident he suffered at the age of four in
which he suffered a severe blow to the head. He has admitted to
committing his first murder at the age of 18, when he pushed a rival out
of a window to his death. Police suspected him of this crime, but
never formally pressed charges and ruled the incident a suicide.
Pichushkin laid low until 2001 and from that point on continually
escalated the killings. He preyed on older gentlemen whom he befriended
with the game of chess and vodka. Most of his crimes were committed in
Bitsa Park, where he would crush his victims skulls with a hammer and
dump them into a sewer drain. After his arrest in 2006, Pichushkin
made the chilling comment that to him, ‘A day without killing was like a
day without food would be for you’.

Angel Maturino Resendiz

Location: Texas, United States

Date: 1986 – 1999

Crime: Known as the ‘Railroad Killer’,
Resendiz was an illegal immigrant who traveled on trains throughout the
country, robbing, raping and killing 24 people. He was executed by
lethal injection on June 27, 2006.

Biography: Because of his status as an
illegal immigrant, details of this killer’s early life are unknown. In
post-capture interviews, Resendiz spoke about a horrible childhood
that was marred by frequent abuse because he lived in the streets of
Mexico. He was taken in by another ‘street-urchin’, who continually
abused him. He has been described by the F.B.I. as a ‘bungling’ crook
who only evaded capture for as long as he did because of his using the
U.S. railway system to move from location to location. Resendiz was a
small man, standing about 5’4′, and he typically used blunt force
trauma to subdue his victims. He would ride a freight train to
whatever destination he felt would present an opportunity for him to
commit his next series of crimes. He claims that he never really knew
where he was going, and that he just got off the train wherever felt
right. Once on the ground, he would scope out the surrounding area and
plan his attack. His main motive appeared to be the killing of his
victims, however, many of them were sexually assaulted, and most of
them were robbed. He was ultimately captured at the border, just
outside of El Paso, Texas without incident or altercation. Once in
custody, he admitted to nine murders, and while serving on death row,
he continued to admit to additional crimes as the years passed.

Baruch Kappel Goldstein

Location: Hebron, West Bank

Date: February 25, 1994

Crime: Known forever as the Cave of the
Patriarch’s Massacre, Goldstein entered a room in a mosque full of
Muslims deep in prayer and opened fire. Twenty nine were killed and
another 150 wounded before Goldstein was subdued and subsequently
beaten to death.

Biography: Baruch Kappel Goldstein was
born on December 9, 1956 in Brooklyn, New York into an Orthodox Jewish
family. He attended a religious school and went onto university where
he received his medical training at Albert Einstein College of
Medicine. He emigrated to Israel and served as a physician in the
Israeli Defense Force. Following his active military career, he served
in the reserves and then settled down to practice emergency medicine
near Hebron, West Bank. Goldstein’s radical views were prevalent
throughout his career as he was known to refuse treatment to non-Jews.
On February 25, 1994, that calendar year’s ‘Purim’ day (A day
celebrating Jewish deliverance from those that wanted to harm them),
Goldstein put on his military reserve uniform, and fully armed, made
his way to the Cave of the Patriarch’s. As Goldstein was mowing down
the Palestinians in prayer, a mosque security guard attacked Goldstein
from behind with a fire-extinguisher and disarmed him. The surviving
crowd then swarmed Goldstein and beat him to death. A shrine was
erected in Goldstein’s honor in a Jewish settlement near Hebron that is
named after the founder of a far-right political party, where those
with extreme right wing political views would worship at the place of
his gravesite. In 1999, due to mounting political pressure about the
shrine in honor of a terrorist, the Israeli army bulldozed the site and
prayer area.

Charles Macarthur Emmanuel

Location: Liberia

Date: 1994 – 2006

Crime: The son of Charles Taylor,
served in the role as leader of his father’s paramilitary and security
forces. Accused of barbaric war crimes, including: beatings, burying
people alive, rape and torture. In 2008, was convicted of several
counts of torture, conspiracy to commit torture and the possession of
firearms in the commission of a violent crime. He is sentenced to 97
years in prison and is currently planning his appeal.

Biography: Sometimes referred to as
Charles Taylor, Jr., Emmanuel was born and raised in the United States
with his mother and stepfather, living in a small middle class
community in Orlando, Florida. As a teenager he found trouble and in
1994, he attempted to rob a man on West Orlando and when confronted by
police, he pulled out a .38 caliber handgun and pointed it at the
officer’s head. This event triggered his move to live with his father
in Liberia. After his father took control of Liberia in 1997, Emmanuel
was appointed to lead the paramilitary wing of the government. He was
in charge of security, anti-terrorist activity and providing ‘muscle’
wherever his father deemed it necessary. In this capacity, he and his
forces were said to burn victims with lighted cigarettes, molten
plastic and candle wax. Other victims were severely beaten with iron
bars and firearms, while others were cut and stabbed and left to bleed
to death. In 2006, Emmanuel tried to return to the United States, but
was arrested at the Miami International Airport. The U.S. Department
of Justice then levied the war crimes charges against him. During the
trial, the prosecution presented a witness who survived an
interrogation at the hands of Emmanuel, where he claims to have been
abducted from his home and brought to an unidentified location for
questioning. His testimony states that Emmanuel and his
co-conspirators pressed a hot iron into his flesh, shocked him with
electrical current, rubbed salt into his open wounds and forced his
hands into boiling water.

David John Copeland

Location: England

Date: 1999

Crime: During a 13-day bombing campaign
in April 1999, detonated bombs he packed with more than 1,500 nails
each in and around London targeting blacks and gays. In all, three
people were killed and 129 were injured. He is currently serving life
imprisonment in a mental hospital.

Biography: Copeland was born on May 15,
1976 in London, England and as he grew up, he was considered small for
his age. This caused him some resentment and created tensions between
him and his classmates. He was given the nickname, ‘Mr. Angry’.
Around the age of 12, he began having violent and sadistic dreams of
himself as a reincarnated Nazi SS officer who kept women as slaves to
do his bidding. In 1992, he left school to work as an apprentice
engineer, but soon turned to petty crimes, drug abuse and heavy
drinking. In May 1997, he joined a far right, anti-immigration
political party called the British National Party. It was around that
time that he learned to make bombs using fireworks and alarm clocks as
timers. He gleaned much of his information by downloading terrorist
information from the internet. In 1998, Copeland had a rift with the
BNP and left to join a smaller, more violent group that espoused Neo
Nazi views, called the National Socialist Movement. His first bomb was
set on April 17, 1999 just outside of a busy supermarket hidden in a
sports bag. The police were called because the market workers were
suspicious, but they kept moving the bag before the police arrived. It
detonated, injuring 50 people, many seriously because of the 4-inch
nails that Copeland had packed the bomb in to serve as shrapnel. Six
days later, he planted his second bomb outside of another market, this
time it detonated in a less populous area and only 13 people were
injured in the blast. Copeland’s third and final bomb was planted in a
crowded pub in the heart of London’s ‘gay village’. Three people were
killed in the blast with another 79 injured, many of whom had to have
limbs amputated because of the severity of their injuries. Police
identified Copeland based on closed circuit video from businesses in
the area around his second bombing. They began publicizing his
identity on the night before the final bomb was placed and arrested him
later that evening, but after the bomb had gone off. Copeland admitted
carrying out the bombings as soon as he was brought into custody.
Prior to trial, five independent psychiatrists diagnosed Copeland as
paranoid schizophrenic with a personality disorder, however, his plea
of insanity was thrown out by the prosecution and he was subsequently
sentenced to six consecutive life sentences.

David Malcolm Gray

Location: Aramoana, New Zealand

Date: November 13, 1990

Crime: After a verbal dispute with a
neighbor, took a scoped, semi-automatic rifle and gunned down thirteen
people, including neighbors and families visiting the township.
Twenty-two hours later, in a blaze of glory, Gray burst out of his
house firing from the hip and was promptly gunned down by police.

Biography: To this day, the deadliest
criminal shooting in New Zealand history was committed by this 33-year
old unemployed farmhand. Born in Dunedin, New Zealand to parents who
were both in the manufacturing industry, Gray also had two siblings.
His school years were unassuming and unremarkable and former classmates
described him as quiet, but not necessarily frightening in any way.
It was also said that he was a loner, and his sister, Joan, said that
Gray’s love for animals became a source of the discontent with his
neighbor who had trouble caring for his pets.
On the day of the spree, Gray argued with his neighbor, then abruptly
went into the house and retrieved his assault rifle. He came out and
promptly shot the man dead. After setting the neighbor’s house on
fire and wounding the dead man’s daughter, he started shooting
indiscriminately at people who began arriving on the scene. As the
police arrived, Gray holed up in his house and continued the fire fight
until he was shot dead.

Donald Henry Gaskins

Location: South Carolina, United States

Date: 1953 – 1982

Crime: Donald ‘Pee Wee’ Gaskins was
known as the Meanest Man in America and was put to death by the
electric chair after being convicted of murdering nine young boys and
girls. Police have him linked to more than 80 killings, and in his
memoirs, Gaskins admits to having killed 181 people.

Biography: Donald Henry Gaskins was
born, March 31, 1933 in Florence County, South Carolina and spent much
of his youth in reform school. He was never a good student and at a
very young age began his criminal career with a series of petty thefts.
His violent streak was on display at a young age as well for during
one burglary, he struck a woman on the head with a hatchet and left her
to die. She survived and Gaskins was sent to serve out a custodial
sentence at reform school. Upon his release, he began committing
insurance fraud and was soon arrested for attacking a teenage girl with
a ball peen hammer. He was sent off to prison for six years. In
prison, Gaskins’ slight build earned him the nickname ‘Pee Wee’ and
also contributed to his being physically and sexually abused. In 1953,
at the State Penitentiary, Gaskins killed for the first time, claiming
that he needed to earn a fearsome reputation to keep himself from
being abused. An additional three years was added to his sentence and
served without further incident. In 1969, Gaskins began torturing and
killing hitchhikers for pure pleasure. Then in 1970, he began a series
of self-described ‘Serious Murders’. These were people that he knew
and killed for personal reasons, such as having once mocked him, owing
him money or because he had been paid to kill them. He was finally
arrested in November 1975, when an associate went to the police and
claimed that he had witnessed Gaskins having murdered two young men.
Sentenced to life in prison, Gaskins killed one final time. He rigged
an explosive device up inside of a portable radio and blew the head off
of a fellow death row inmate. This gruesome murder earned him the
nickname of ‘The Meanest Man in America’ and led to his death sentence.
During his time on death row, he told his life story to a journalist
and confessed to more than 100 additional murders, however, police were
unable to link him to all of them.

Eden Natan-Zada

Location: Shfar’am Israel

Date: August 4, 2005

Crime: Natan-Zada was a 19-year old
soldier in the Israeli Defense Force who went AWOL after getting
involved in extreme, far-right religious activities. He opened fire on
a crowded bus killing four people and wounding 22 others before being
subdued and handcuffed. Then, while cuffed inside the bus, the crowd
attacked him and beat him to death.

Biography: Born July 9, 1986 Natan-Zada
was described as a very bright and studious young schoolboy. As a
teen, he was introduced to Kahanism, an extremist religious movement,
via the internet. As he was serving his mandatory military service in
the Israeli Defence Forces, he became increasingly disenfranchised and
his views became more extreme. He would spend his weekends in an
Orthodox West bank Settlement that was known as the unofficial
headquarters of the far-right wing extremists. After deserting the
military, it is believed that Natan-Zada took refuge in that same
settlement. On August 4, 2005, he boarded a bus, destined for
Shfaram’, in full military dress and carrying his M16 rifle. The bus
driver, thought it was odd for a visibly observant Jewish soldier to be
headed towards the Arab dominated Shfaram’ area, but Natan-Zada
convinced him that it was his destination. He rode silently, until the
bus began pulling into Shfaram, when he rose, blocked the doorway and
opened fire on the Arabs in the bus. When he paused to reload his
weapon, people in the street stormed the bus and subdued him. Upon the
arrival of the police, they found him tied up and still alive, however,
the police were unable to contain the crowd and Natan-Zada was
lynched. In some writings that he left behind, Natan-Zada claimed that
his motive was to provoke widespread riots and violence which would
serve to deter the planned evacuation of the Gaza strip settlers.

Eric Edgar Cooke

Location: Perth, Australia

Date: 1959 – 1963

Crime: Cooke, known as ‘The Night
Caller’, assaulted twenty two people, while killing eight of his
victims utilizing a variety of attacks and means. He was hanged for
his crimes in October 1964.

Biography: Cooke was born on February
25, 1931 in the city of Perth, Australia as the eldest of three
children. His father, who had never wanted to be married in the first
place, was an alcoholic who beat his only son mercilessly for stepping
in to protect his mother from his violent outbursts. Cooke , not only
suffered at the hands of his father, he was bullied and mocked
throughout school due to a hare lip and cleft palate. He spoke in
barely a mumble and corrective surgical procedures failed to correct
the deformities. As a teen, he was rejected by his peers and spent his
nights committing petty crimes and vandalism. He served 18 months in
prison for burning down a local church that denied him a place in its
choir. When he was 21 he joined the military only to be kicked out
three months later when his teenage crimes came to light. He was
married a year later and fathered seven children. Oddly enough, this
seemingly stable family life did not keep Eric Cooke from roaming the
streets at night and committing many minor offenses, of which he was
arrested several times for being a ‘peeping tom’. In the early 1960′s,
the city of Perth was terrorized by a series of seemingly unrelated
violent crimes. People were being killed in hit and run’s, stabbings,
shootings and assaulted during home invasions. The randomness of the
crimes did not indicate that this was the work of one man. The
assaults were carried out with several different rifles, an assortment
of knives, even scissors and an axe. Cooke was finally caught when a
rifle he had used to murder one of his victims was found hidden in the
bushes. Ballistics tests tied it to the crime giving the police an
opportunity to trap the perpetrator. They placed it back where they
had found it, but put it under surveillance in the hopes that the owner
would return to collect it. Two weeks later, Cooke retrieved the
rifle and was arrested. Once captured, Cooke confessed to 22 violent
crimes, eight of which had resulted in murders. He was dubbed ‘The
Night Caller’ when details of his attacks and crimes became public
during his trial.

Eric Robert Rudolph

Location: United States

Date: 1996 – 1998

Crime: Known as the ‘Olympic Park
Bomber’, Rudolph committed a series of bombings across the southern
United States. He is credited in the deaths of 3 people with another
150 injured in the attacks that he called, ‘A guerilla campaign against
abortion and the homosexual agenda’.

Biography: Rudolph was born on September
19, 1966 in Merritt Island, Florida. He dropped out of school before
the tenth grade and went to work with his brother as a carpenter. His
mother espoused radical, racist Christian beliefs and instilled those
views in young Eric. In 1985, Rudolph finally earned his GED and went
to college for two semesters, later enlisting in the U.S. Army. He
served in the 101st Airborne Division and attended Air Assault School
prior to his discharge in 1989. His first bombing was on the biggest
stage imaginable in 1996, as he planted a bomb during the Summer
Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia. The blast killed one spectator and
wounded 111 others. A Turkish cameraman also died during the incident
as he suffered a heart attack while trying to rush to the scene to film
the incident. Six months after the Olympics bombing, he targeted an
abortion clinic in Atlanta and a known lesbian bar a month later. Then,
in January 1998, he bombed an Alabama abortion clinic, this time
killing a security guard and critically wounding a nurse. Within two
weeks, he was identified as a suspect in the Alabama bombing. By May,
he was on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list and was considered to be armed
and dangerous, with a $1 million reward for information posted leading
to his capture. He spent the next five years on the run, spending much
of his time evading the authorities by hiding in the Appalachian
wilderness. He was captured on May 31, 2003 behind a supermarket as he
was scavenging through a dumpster. In order to avoid the death
penalty, Rudolph agreed to a plea bargain admitting his guilt in each
of the bombings and is currently serving four consecutive life
sentences with no ability for parole.

Franz Fuchs

Location: Austria

Date: 1993 – 1997

Crime: Fuchs was an Austrian terrorist
who killed 4 people and injured 15 others in a wave of bombings in the
mid 1990′s. He was captured and sentenced to life in prison but was
found hanged in his cell within a year.

Biography: Franz Fuchs was born December
12, 1949 in Austria. Because so little has been documented about his
childhood, it is difficult to determine the origins of his xenophobic
beliefs. Criminal psychologists have likened him to U.S. terrorist
bomber, Theodore Kaczynski, both being of high intelligence but
socially inept loners. Fuchs’ mail bomb campaign differs from
Kaczynski’s in that he targeted people who were foreigners or were part
of organizations that he considered friendly to foreigners. His first
wave of mail bombs began in December 1993, claiming several early
victims and injuring the mayor of Vienna. Other bombs from this
campaign were discovered and neutralized without incident. In
September 1994, Fuchs claimed responsibility for the bombings in a
letter to the foreign minister of Slovenia. His second wave of mail
bombs in October 1994, all failed without detonating. Then in February
1995, four people were killed when he targeted a group of Romanian
gypsies. Between June and December of 1995, Fuch’s stepped up the
frequency of his bombing waves targeting media, medics and refugee aid
workers. Many of these bombs failed or detonated inside of mail boxes
which limited the number of injured people. Finally, in October 1997,
Fuchs was manic with paranoia and took to following people that he
thought were spying on him. Two women filed a complaint and when two
police officers attempted to question him, Fuchs detonated a bomb he
had with him, losing both of his arms below the elbow in the blast. He
was arrested and put on trial, however, many in Austria feel that
authorities never uncovered all of the details in the investigation,
leaving doubts about whether Fuchs was acting alone. Further doubts
were raised after he was found hanging in his prison cell, leaving many
to question how a man without hands could fashion a cord from an
electric razor in a manner which would facilitate his hanging.

Howard Unruh

Location: Camden, New Jersey

Date: September 6, 1949

Crime: Armed with a Luger P08 pistol,
in an apparent retaliation for some minor property damage, randomly
shot at and killed 13 people, injuring 3 others in his hometown. After
a long standoff with police, surrendered into custody.

Biography: Howard Unruh was a decorated
World War II veteran who lived with his mother in Camden, New Jersey
after coming home from the war. He was a very quiet man, described as
shy and reserved, who had trouble making friends and getting along with
his neighbors. He appeared to be having a challenging time of
deciding what he wanted to do after his military life. He briefly
attended college, but dropped out after a few months. Tensions in the
neighborhood began to increase and Unruh became the victim of ridicule
from local teens who mocked him as ‘being gay’ and a ‘mama’s boy’.
Unruh became reclusive and investigators found in his bedroom, a
detailed notebook which contained detailed about every perceived
transgression against him, both real and imagined. Many of the entries
had the note, ‘retal.’ after them, apparently indicating retaliation
against that transgressor. On the morning of the attack, he dressed in
his best suit and set out to track down and shoot those that he had
identified. He shot and killed many of his intended victims, but
others were able to hide and avoid the attack. After his arrest, Unruh
was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic and to this day resides in a
Psychiatric Hospital in Trenton, New Jersey.

Huang Yong

Location: China

Date: 2001 – 2003

Crime: Accused of murdering between 17
and 25 teenage boys between September 2001 and 2003. He would meet
them in video game parlors and internet caf’s and lure them to his home
with promises of well paying jobs or school funding.

Biography: Born in 1974, the son of a
pig farmer, Huang’s early life is sparsely documented. He spent one
tour of duty in the military and then spent time as a migrant farm
worker in Southern China. Huang built a torture device in his
basement, called the ‘intelligent hobbyhorse’ which resembled a noodle
making machine. It is said that his victims were suffocated while
being bound to the machine. His modus operandi was to meet the youths
in video halls or internet cafes, and tell them he was working on a new
video game that he titled ‘God and the Intelligent Hobby Horse’.
Other times he would offer to recommend them for well paying jobs in
the area or pay them for school or sightseeing tours. He would drug
them, suffocate them and then, posthumously rape them. He buried his
victims in the grounds around his home. At the trial, Huang was quoted
as saying, ‘Ever since I was a kid, I wanted to be an assassin, but
never had the chance’.

Ian Huntley

Location: Soham, Cambridgeshire, England

Date: August 4, 2002

Crime: Serving life in prison for the
murders of two ten-year old girls (Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman)
whom he had lured into his home as they were walking past after a trip
to a local market. Known as the Soham Murders, this case remains one
of the highest profile murders in the U.K. in recent years.

Biography: Ian Kevin Huntley was born
on January 31, 1974 in Grimsby, England. His school age years were
marked by incessant bullying and at the age of 13, it had gotten so bad,
he had to be transferred to a different school. He left school in
1990 and worked at a variety of unskilled positions with low pay.
During the 1990′s, he was investigated by the police on ten different
occasions for rape, sex with a minor, indecent assault and burglary.
He was brought up on charges twice, but in both instances the charges
were dropped. In November 2001, using an assumed name of Ian Nixon,
Huntley applied for and was given the position of caretaker at a
secondary school in Soham. On the evening of August 4, 2002, Huntley
had gotten into a heated argument with his live-in girlfriend over the
phone after he accused her of cheating. After slamming down the phone,
Huntley saw two 10 year old girls walking past his rented house.
Knowing that they were students at the school where his girlfriend
worked, he coaxed them inside and killed them. Huntley disposed of the
girls bodies by throwing them into a ditch, some 20 miles away and
setting them on fire. In the mean time, Huntley’s girlfriend returned
to the cottage and helped Huntley clean up any evidence of what had
taken place there. A little less than two weeks later, the girls
soccer shirts were found in a dumpster at the college where Huntley
worked and within 13 hours of that discovery, their bodies were found
in the woods. During the trial, Huntley admitted that the girls had
died in his house, but claimed that both deaths were accidental. The
jury rejected those claims and returned a guilty verdict. While
serving his life sentence, Huntley has survived an attack in 2005 by
another prisoner with boiling water. Then in 2006, Huntley attempted
to commit suicide by overdosing on pills. In January, 2008, he was
moved to a different facility for long-term prisoners and those of
notoriety.

Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman

Javed Iqbal

Location: Pakistan

Date: Occurred between 1978 and 2001

Crime: After murdering his 100th
victim, sent a letter to police admitting to the strangulation and
dismemberment of young boys between the ages of 6 and 16.

Biography: Javed Iqbal was born into the
family of a wealthy, Pakistani business man. He was the fourth son
out of six children. His was a routine childhood and education through
high school. In fact, his life was unremarkable until at the age of
37, he filed a police complaint about an alleged beating he suffered at
the hands of two servant boys. The police dismissed his complaint
setting Iqbal off to exact his own revenge. In his meticulously kept
journal, he vowed to make 100 women cry for their lost children. Over a
period of six months, he lured unsuspecting street children to his
apartment with promises of food and a place to sleep. Then, he would
asphyxiate the child with cyanide. It was found that he disposed of
the bodies using huge vats of hydrochloric acid and then dumped the
remains in the river. The police investigation revealed that he had
been paying three teenage accomplices to help him commit these
atrocities. Shortly after being sentenced to death by strangulation, he
was found dead in his jail cell. To date, Iqbal’s death in custody
cannot be determined whether it was suicide or death by torture.

Jeff Weise

Location: Red Lake, Minnesota

Date: March 21, 2005

Crime: Began with the killing of his
grandfather and grandfather’s girlfriend with a .22 caliber pistol.
Then after confiscating a Glock 23 pistol and 12 gauge shotgun, drove
to Red Lake Senior High and opened fire on campus. The dead included:
five students, one teacher and a security guard. Five more victims
were wounded before Weise committed suicide.

Biography: Weise lived with his
grandmother in Red Lake, Minnesota. His mother died in a car crash in
1999 and his father committed suicide thereafter. He lived a
conflicted life. Seemingly very intelligent, some described him as
very nice, thoughtful and always available to help people with their
issues. Others, described him as sullen and withdrawn and a loner. He
was always dressed in black and was therefore labeled, ‘Goth’, by
fellow students. He spent a lot of time on the internet on various
Nazi websites and even created and posted animations which depict a
masked killer on a shooting spree in a park-like setting. On the
morning of the killing, Weise went to his paternal grandfathers house, a
local police officer, and shot him while he slept. He then shot his
grandfathers girlfriend, strapped on his grandfathers body armor, took a
few of his weapons and drove to the school in his squad car. He
pulled up to the front door of the school and started shooting.
Eyewitness accounts describe the massacre to be eerily similar to the
Columbine killings, with Weise asking a student whether he believed in
God, before shooting him. During a standoff with police, Weise was hit
by two bullets which led him to retreat to a vacant classroom where he
shot himself ending the massacre.

Jiverly Antares Wong

Location: Binghamton, NY

Date: April 3, 2009

Crime: Wong walked into a crowded,
local Civic Center with a 9mm Beretta and .45 caliber pistol and
randomly opened fire on the people inside. A total of 13 victims were
dead and 4 others wounded before Wong turned the gun on himself.

Biography: Jiverly Antares Wong was born
on December 8, 1967 into a Chinese family living in South Korea. By
the age of 20, he had moved to California in the United States and by
1992 had been arrested and convicted of misdemeanor fraud. He was
still allowed his American citizenship in November of 1995, was married
and divorced by 1999. He worked steadily as a delivery man in
California until July 2007, where one day he just didn’t show up for
work. It was later learned that he had abruptly moved to the
Binghamton area in central New York state. He worked at a vacuum
cleaner plant until it closed its doors in November 2008.
Acquaintances and co-workers of Wong indicated that he was becoming
increasingly more frustrated because he couldn’t master the English
language and his anger worsened after he lost his job at the plant.
During his time in New York at the plant, he had commented on more than
one occasion about his distaste for America and that he wanted to
assassinate the President. Two days after the shooting, a package was
received by a Syracuse, New York news station which contained a two
page letter and several photos of Wong holding guns and smiling. In
the letter, is a rambling diatribe detailing perceived persecutions by
the government and police against Wong.

Johann “Jack” Unterweger

Location: Austria and the U.S.

Date: 1976 – 1992

Crime: This Austrian serial killer is
known for committing his crimes in several countries around the world.
He was charged with the deaths of fifteen prostitutes and was given
several monikers, including: The Vienna Strangler, The Poet of Death,
The Pug Dumper and The Jesus Christ Jumper.

Biography: Unterweger grew up in
poverty, the son of a Viennese mother and an unknown American soldier.
He spent his youth committing petty crimes and assaulting prostitutes,
for which he served jail time. Then at the age of eighteen, he
murdered a German woman by strangling her with her own brassiere. He
was captured, convicted and sentenced to life in prison. While
incarcerated, Unterweger became something of a celebrity and a darling
to the social-elite by writing plays, poetry and his autobiography.
After fifteen years of his life sentence, the intellectual community
petitioned for his release by claiming his successful rehabilitation.
After his release, he hosted television programs and made the best of
his celebrity. Within the first year after his release, he had killed
six more prostitutes. Then in 1991, he was hired to write about crime
in Los Angeles. He came to America and began his research into
prostitution, even accompanying the Los Angeles police department on
patrols through known ‘red-light’ districts. During this time, three
more prostitutes were beaten, assaulted and strangled with their
brassieres. Law enforcement finally figured out what was happening and
in February 1992, Unterweger was arrested. Back in Austria, they had
also pieced together his crimes and he was charged with eleven murders
back there. After his trial, on June 29, 1994, he was sentenced to
life in prison with no chance for parole. That night, Unterweger hung
himself in his cell.

John Bunting

Location: Australia

Date: 1992 – 1999

Crime: Once described as Australia’s
worst serial killer, he is serving life in prison for his role in
coordinating the murders of eleven people.

Biography: Little information is
available about the back-story of John Justin Bunting, born in
September 1966 in Adelaide, South Australia. However, after his arrest
for the murders of eleven, it is known that Bunting is a master
manipulator and hater of pedophiles and homosexuals. Under his
direction, his small group of accomplices terrorized anyone they
suspected of being a homosexual. They also engaged in criminally
seizing welfare payments from the weak and elderly, over a period of
seven years. Bunting first murdered in August 1992, when he invited a
man into his home and began accusing him of being a pedophile. He
bashed in the man’s skull with a shovel and buried him in a shallow
grave in his backyard. Then in 1995, Bunting and an accomplice murdered
a mentally disabled man who was accused of pedophilia by a local woman
saying he made sexual advances toward her grandchildren. The man was
never reported missing, and Bunting began claiming the man’s welfare
payments. This routine was repeated over the next several years with
many of the victims. Police finally connected the murders to Bunting
after a year long missing persons investigation led them to an abandoned
bank in Snowtown, Australia. Inside they found six vats of acid which
contained human remains. They soon searched former properties rented
by Bunting and discovered the remains of several more victims. During
the trial, Bunting’s accomplices said that they had recently begun to
experiment with cannibalism before disposing of the bodies. After an 11
month trial, Bunting was convicted of eleven counts of murder and
sentenced to 11 consecutive life sentences with no opportunity for
parole.

John Wayne Glover

Location: Australia

Date: 1989 – 1990

Crime: Known as the ‘Granny Killer’ for
killing at least 6 elderly women near Sydney, Australia’s North Shore
over a fourteen month period between 1989 and 1990. Fifteen years into
his life sentence, he hanged himself in his prison cell.

Biography: Originally born in
Wolverhampton, England on November 26, 1932, into a working class
family, Glover spent his youth committing petty crimes. After joining
the British Army, he was quickly thrown out after they discovered his
criminal past. This drove him to emigrate to Australia in 1956, where
he settled down in Melbourne. Throughout his life, Glover had troubled
relationships with older women, including his own mother. In the
early 1960′s, Glover was convicted of assaulting women and causing
bodily harm. The attacks were considered quite severe as the women
were thrown to the ground and had their clothing torn off. Remarkably,
he only received a probationary sentence for these crimes. The first
evidence of a Glover murder, didn’t arise until 1989 at which point he
had been married for 20 years. This occurred in March of 1989, when he
attacked an elderly women and beat her to death with a hammer. He
struck again two months later and killed another elderly woman in the
same manner. Over the course of the next several months, through the
summer and fall of 1989, Glover began sexually assaulting elderly women
in various nursing homes. He was questioned by staff in one of the
attacks but not in the others. Late in October of 1989, he followed an
elderly woman home to her residence in a retirement community and
bashed her face repeatedly into the brick wall outside her front door.
The woman survived but was unable to give the police a description of
her assailant. In November, he killed three more times using a blunt
instrument to bash in his victim’s skull each time. In January 1990,
Glover was caught after touching an elderly cancer patient in a
sexually inappropriate manner. He ran from the scene but was
identified by staff. After being questioned by police, Glover was put
under constant surveillance. Finally in March, Glover killed his sixth
victim, while under police surveillance. He entered the home of an
elderly acquaintance
and after 3 hours with no visible activity, the police became concerned
and finally entered the house. They found the naked woman in a pool
of blood, wrapped in towels. They then found Glover unconscious in a
filled bathtub, apparently from an overdose of Valium. He survived the
suicide attempt and ultimately confessed to his crimes.

Joseph Paul Franklin

Location: United States

Date: 1977 – 1980

Crime: Franklin is best known for his
confessions in the attempted murders of publisher Larry Flynt and
political advisor, Vernon Jordan, and while never convicted of those
shootings, he has been sentenced to death for seven murders committed
throughout the United States.

Biography: Franklin was born as James
Clayton Vaughn, Jr. in Mobile, Alabama on April 13, 1950. In 1976, he
changed his name to Joseph Paul Franklin. As a child, his family was
dirt poor and by the time he was a teenager, he became very interested
in Evangelical Christianity and later Nazism and the Ku Klux Klan.
Never settling down, Franklin would roam the East Coast, saying he was
on a mission to ‘cleanse the world’ of those he considered inferior.
Prior to having committed his first murder, Franklin fire-bombed a
synagogue and assaulted an African American couple. Then in 1977, he
began killing. He was a meticulous killer in that he organized his
killing field with several escape routes and never left evidence
behind. His victims were all killed by long range rifle shots.
Franklin was a prodigious sharpshooter, despite being partially blind
in one eye and totally blind in the other. He would select his site
for the shot and then his victim would be chosen at random based on
opportunity. Most of his killings were fired from distances of more
than 100 feet away. Known for his supremacist views, he once threatened
to kill then President Jimmy Carter. He was on the F.B.I.’s most
wanted list for years but was an expert at eluding the authorities. He
was finally caught when he was selling blood to the blood bank and the
nurse recognized one of his tattoos that had been described in various
news reports about the sniper killings. After his arrest in 1980,
Franklin confessed to more than 20 murders and several bombings. He is
currently serving life in prison in a Missouri penitentiary.

Juan Vallejo Corona

Location: Sutter County, California

Date: 1971

Crime: Convicted of killing 25 migrant
farm workers over a six week period and sentenced to consecutive life
sentences. All of his victims were stabbed and mutilated with a
machete and many bore evidence of sexual abuse, before being buried in
shallow graves in farms throughout the region.

Biography: Born in Mexico, Corona first
came to America illegally in 1950, at the age of sixteen. Shortly
after a flash flood killed 38 people in 1955, Corona is said to have
suffered a mental break. He was committed to DeWitt State hospital in
1956 and diagnosed with schizophrenia. He was deemed cured after a
series of 23 shock treatments and deported back to Mexico. He came
back to the United States and went back to working the farms in
California. It is said that Corona had a violent temper and was often
abusive toward gay men. His first victim was a gay man who was found
in 1970, hacked about the head and face with a machete in the restroom
of a small caf owned by Corona’s half-brother. In early 1971, many
more victims began showing up in several farms around the area. In one
of the graves, police found evidence linking the murder to Corona. A
subsequent search of his apartment turned up additional evidence, such
as blood stained clothing, knives and a ledger which contained the
names of many of the victims and the date they were murdered.